How do you prepare battle maps /tg/?

>battlemaps
>not theater of the mind

what is this, 4e?

>>54928920
I hope so, the grid based tactical combat made fighting fun.

>>54928093

I soak them in a solution of vinegar and either tea or used coffee grounds for a few hours on game day, before people show up.

>>54928093
I see you included Idiot Crater on your map. Nice.

File: 1412881668532.jpg (22KB, 358x392px) Image search: [Google]

22KB, 358x392px

>>54928093
I use a dry erase board with a grid on it, and I improvise with a dry erase marker.

>>54928920
Why yes, I do run 4e.

>>54928936
It IS fun. My players and I have been having a blast for YEARS. I don't see us switching to 5 any time soon.

>>54928920
>Wait, how far away am I, again?

>>54931223

it's called using your fucking words anon, just because your retarded ass needs to see a grid in order to imagine spacing and position doesn't mean we're all as mentally deficient as you are.

File: grand.png (3MB, 3072x2172px) Image search: [Google]

3MB, 3072x2172px

>>54928093
pic is the first map. Second one is too big to post on 4chan or any of the free image hosting sites I know of that didn't close down earlier this year.

For the first one (medium/small sized container ship)

1.) I went out searching for what I came to learn was called a "general layout and capacity plan" for the kind of ship they would be on.

2.) Spent time going from metric to pixels, then pixels to imperial so that I could put a 5 foot line on the map for reference. (Mutant's and Masterminds 3e uses imperial instead of metric.)

3.) put the map into Roll20

4.) spent a few hours working on the settings in roll20 to in order to end up with a grid of squares that registered as 2.5 feet (2'6") on each side and were in scale so that 2 of them were as tall as the "this is 5 feet" line I'd placed on the map.

5.) set up fog of war

For the second one (an industrial area)

1.) searched around on google for a place that looked right.

2.) grabbed Google Earth Pro and Microsoft ICE

2.) spent a while trying to figure out how to get GEP to display areas without pseudo 3d for things forther from the center of the display, and then how to take good pictures of areas I was looking at.

3.) took satellite view images of the area.

4.) used MS ICE to stitch the images together into a larger one

5.) spent a bunch of time trying to figure out how to put a scale on the resulting map

6.) spent more time trying to adjust settings in roll20 until the square grip was both the right size and read as the correct distances. (If anyone is a master of customizing map grids in roll20 please talk to me, none of the instructions I've helped with making custom grids for maps that weren't drawn/made with them in a timely fashion, and my players who have GM'd more games in roll20 then I've even played are a bit at a loss for how to make the process less one of endless trial and error)

7.) didn't bother with fog of war this time.